The Spirited Object Challenge

[Terpsichore]

Today, whilst I was supposed to be working, I wound up on Wikipedia (as so often happens) and ended up reading about urban legends, ghost stories and the like. Along the way, I wound up reading about a group of Japanese spirits called Tsukumogami, which are "ordinary household items that have come to life on the one-hundredth anniversary of their birthday".

Take a look around you. Find the first inanimate object that catches your eye, and imagine that it is now alive. What kind of a spirit does it have? Is it a happy spirit, or a wrathful, violent spirit? Did it come to life for any specific reason?

If the first item you spot is the same item that someone else has written about, maybe take the second (or third, or fourth...) item instead, for the sake of variety.

 

[Ashi]

Lappy (aka my laptop) happened to be the first object to catch my eye. I remember the day I got it, on Christmas a few years ago. Oh, I was thrilled to finally have a computer of my own! Now, sometimes Lappy gets on my nerves and I wish - oh so angrily - to throw it out my window. Lappy is my androgynous HP Notebook, for which I will use male pronouns to describe. He is very finicky. He frequently freezes when I try to open a program, especially Photoshop and my internet browser. He never goes by any kind of schedule, demanding that I update his software every other day, which is quite annoying. After a while of being on and being used, he's inclined to get huffy and whiny and does things more slowly just to spite me. Lappy is a know it all, always correcting me and looking things up on the internet even when I know them to be true and has a constant need to contradict me. He reads my emails and FB messages despite I tell him not to and uses his ability to hack my accounts as leverage to get his way. I can still turn him off, but if he wills it he can turn back on. When I asked why he came to be, he only brought up some Wiki stuff about the supernatural and haunted things and would give no straight answer. I don't think he knows. As annoying as he can be, Lappy has his pleasant days. I think he came to life to test my anger management skills and patience.